• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, July 9, 2020

TripleLift has signed a pact with the BBC to be the exclusive native programmatic partner for BBC Global News in the U.S. and Canada. The native ad placement covers BBC News, Sport, and the BBC.com homepage and related sites.

With the agreement TripleLift is delivering the first integrated native advertising across the BBC.com portfolio. It’s also the first time commercial creative will be embedded within content areas usually reserved for internal promotions.

Critical to the arrangement, per the BBC, is that the native ads are delivering “an experience in keeping with each of the sites’ UX while balancing this with our editorial need to ensure the distinctiveness of advertising for our users.”

Triplelift has been on a mission to support quality journalism as it weathers a tough ad slump during the pandemic. Last month it launched a programmatic media initiative called “Help Journalism” that allows media buyers to customize ad spend to any of the over 1,600 news sites on TripleLift’s platform.

Commenting on the BBC deal, Michael Lehman, senior vice president global supply at TripleLift said that “the industry and our communities count on thriving news networks, and a direct-to-publisher relationship helps ensure that."